How to hide an entry in the Add/Remove Programs applet?

Original link: http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/15/1/How-to-hide-an-entry-in-the-AddRemove-Programs-applet.html

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This article discusses the methods to hide an entry in the Add/Remove Programs listing. Following any one of the methods is enough. This article is all about registry editing, so be sure to have appropriate backup(s) in place. For more information about registry backup, see here

The Add/Remove Programs list is populated from the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall

Under the Uninstall key, there will be several sub-keys, each representing a software program that you installed. The following example shows how to hide the AnalogX Proxy entry from Add/Remove Programs listing:

Method 1

• Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe 
• Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ AnalogX Proxy

• In the right-pane, right-click the DisplayName value and choose Rename 
• Rename it to anything (For example, NoDisplayName )

The AnalogX Proxy entry is now hidden. To make it visible again, rename the value back to DisplayName

Method 2

• Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe 
• Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ AnalogX Proxy

• In the right-pane, create a new REG_DWORD value named SystemComponent 
• Double-click SystemComponent and set its data to 1

The AnalogX Proxy entry is now hidden. To make it visible again, delete the SystemComponent value that you created earlier.

More information

In this example, the name of the sub-key was AnalogX Proxy, which is easily identifiable. In some cases, the sub-key names are not obvious, and there will be a list of GUID entries similar to the following:

• {00000409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7} 
• {1CB92574-96F2-467B-B793-5CEB35C40C29} 
• {2318C2B1-4965-11d4-9B18-009027A5CD4F} 
• {350C97B0-3D7C-4EE8-BAA9-00BCB3D54227}

In such cases, you can select the entry and look in the right-pane for the DisplayName string. The string tells you the name of the application concerned.